


Strawberries

by missema



Series: Big Damn Heroes [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, F/M, Memories, Rebuilding, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 02:04:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10375419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missema/pseuds/missema
Summary: A luxurious life is almost an unknown to a soldier, but strawberries aren't really luxuries. Unless that soldier is Mia Shepard, on the front lines during the biggest war ever, fighting for all the people she's ever known. But after that is over, she's still just a woman in a collapsing world that misses the simplest of pleasures. Zaeed recalls all the times her favorite food popped up in their lives in a post-destroy setting of rebuilding.





	

"What's that?" Zaeed asked, watching as Shepard tenderly brought in a large pot and put it on the counter in the kitchen of their prefab. The pot was clay, handmade and filled with holes at regular intervals all around it. It wasn't a regular vase, he could see that, but he was at a loss as to what the fuck it was.

"It's a strawberry pot. For growing strawberries. I managed to get some seeds with one of my trades and I'm hoping that I can get them to grow," Mia said. She smiled as she sat it down, proud of her handiwork. She made the pot, as she'd made most of their dishes and the ones they traded or gave away.

For the first few months after the Reaper attack, Shepard had been in the hospital. Her injuries were extensive, and even now, she required a lot of care. Zaeed had been the one to go out, joining all the remaining troops with the rebuilding, but Mia was never one to stay idle. Instead of doing the heavy lifting, she'd gone to an almost untouched civic building, where they'd previously held painting and pottery classes and had starting making things for the community. Before this he hadn't given a thought to arts and crafts, but now it was the purpose behind them that gave Shepard and her trembling hands some sense of meaning in this broken world.

The day she'd brought home a painting, he'd almost cried. Washing blood off of broken streets, walking by memorials he could no longer bring himself to read, hearing those silent, shuddering sobs coming from within walls too thin to hold the sorrow of their occupants -- he'd forgotten what hope felt like. But Shepard had managed to capture it in her amateur brushstrokes against a piece of cardboard, light on a shining blue sea, rocks a peaceful beach. She was giving her strawberry pot the same look he often gave her painting.

"You love strawberries," he said, looking over at her with a smile. His voice was rougher than normal, quiet. Zaeed loved Shepard, even with her weird goddamn pot. She nodded at him in confirmation, still smiling at her creation.

"I do."

#

They were kissing below deck in the Normandy as Shepard's communicator beeped and let her know they were about to dock at the Citadel.

"Good," Shepard said, acknowledging the information while she turned away from him. She looked out the window for confirmation, gazing into the blackness of the void to see if a glimpse of the citadel might go by before they turned into their docking bay.

"Why are we here?" he asked. Things were nearly at their end, and they were almost ready to go take down the Collectors. Only a few loose ends needed tidying, at least according to Shepard. If he could help, he would, even if he was still slightly pissy about the way things ended with Vido. Revenge wasn't something to be swept aside so easily, not after all these years, but he had to trust Shepard.

"Just a supply run before we head further out. I want to make sure all the weapons and food stores are where we need them. Plus, I think a few people wanted to make sure their messages were sent out," Mia turned away from him sharply, but he didn't take offense. His hands tended to wander, even when he didn't intend for them to and she wasn't one for extraneous touching.

She was almost to the door when she looked over her shoulder, suddenly shy as she stopped. Zaeed waited for her to speak, and when she did her voice was quiet, almost seductively low in pitch. "Do you like strawberries?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Haven't thought much on them to be honest," he admitted.

"They're my favorite," Mia said. "And there's some fresh from earth, and strawberry ice cream waiting for me on the citadel. I'll share, if you ask nicely enough."

"If I'd known you were taking requests, I'd have asked for my favorite food."

"What's that?" she asked.

"Whiskey," Zaeed admitted, and she laughed.

"If we live, I'll buy you the best bottle I can find."

"If we live through this, you're not leaving your goddamn quarters long enough to find a bottle," Zaeed promised. He'd have to remember about the strawberries, he was sure he could work that in somehow.

#

The Citadel was a shitty place for refugees, but here he was, broke, out of a job and sitting around with a bunch of goddamned batarians. Zaeed really hated sitting on his hands, but there wasn't much that could be done. This war was going to come to a head sooner or later, and he was hoping for sooner just so they could fucking get on with it. Then he thought of Shepard, and hoped this war would just dissolve away into nothing so she wouldn't have to risk herself.

He sent her a private message on his omni-tool. "If you're around, come to the Citadel within two days. Not urgent." He added the last part after thinking about her racing through half the galaxy to see him.

She showed up ten hours later. "I was already in the neighborhood," she told him when he raised an eyebrow at her. Not that he wasn't glad to see her, he was always glad to see his woman walking towards him, but it was unexpected for her to come running at his call. Shepard had shit to do, planets to save, marshaling her forces and all that.

He gave her the carton of strawberries. It had taken all the favors he knew how to still use to get them, and they were already looking a little sad. They wouldn't have lasted more than two days, not even with his portable refrigeration unit. She ate one, and for a moment, he thought she might have come just from that. Her eyes were closed blissfully, and the moan she made sounded like the ones it took him a decent amount of work and a tired tongue to coax from her.

Mia smiled at the rest of the strawberries in the carton like they'd saved her life, then she held out her hand to him and turned her wide smile on him as he folded his fingers into hers. "Come back to the ship with me."

"You don't want to be alone with them?" he asked, and she giggled at him. They were already moving towards the guarded door that kept the refugees penned in, and she just nodded at the guard next to it.

"We can share them," she said.

"They're for you."

"Ah yes, but I love you, and I want to share. Besides, I'm afraid I won't get to see you enough before the end of this, and if I can have a few hours of you and strawberries, my favorite things, I'd be stupid not to take it."

The elevator wasn't empty when they got in, but he kissed her like it was. He felt her startle, the surprise melting into warm acceptance, as his tongue slid into her mouth, tasting the strawberry she'd just eaten.

#

"Do you know what I miss?" she asked, slightly tipsy and yelling over the noise at Purgatory. "Wine. Real wine, not that asari crap. All of it, rosé, champagne, all the reds and whites from earth. Real Riesling. A good Pinot Noir. They can't reproduce that."

"You drink wine, Shepard?" he asked, chuckling.

"Not very often, but I acquired a taste for it," she answered. Her crooked smile was a little tipsy, but Zaeed knew that it wouldn't last long. Whatever Cerberus did when they rebuilt her, or maybe it was just something about Shepard herself, but she wouldn't be tipsy for long, no matter what she drank. Drunk was almost out of the question -- he'd never seen her drunk, not once, and she'd drank enough before they went through the Omega 4 relay to drown an army.

"One time I had brunch. Did I ever tell you about that, with all the rich patrons from the Alliance academy? The real kind with fancy drinks and an overabundance of food. French toast and almonds. Mimosas and strawberries and whipped cream. Mangoes cut into neat little slices and garnishing pancakes. Avocados and bacon. God, bacon. Did you know you can cut a strawberry into a flower? It's true," she said.

Zaeed chuckled again at her, he couldn't help it. Mia was flushed, her lips pouting as she remembered a distant meal, the likes of which they will probably never have again.

"Are we going back to yours or did you just want to drink at the bar?" he asked, coming in close to her side so he didn't have to yell his question.

He liked the new place that Anderson had gifted to her. Hell, anyone would like it, but they'd never had a place that afforded them real privacy before. The ship, well that was just the problem with the ship -- it wasn't theirs. A lot of people relied on her on that ship, and there she was Commander Shepard all the time. When he'd been with her at the apartment, she'd just been Mia, the woman who sat in the hot tub so long her hair went from limp and damp to unruly, dried out frizz before his eyes. He reckoned not many people ever got to see her like that, and as much as he liked drinking with her, he wanted to just be with her.

"Where'd you get those strawberries before? Can you get anymore?" she asked, so hopefully it almost pained him to shake his head in the negative.

"Contact's dead now far as I can figure. Reapers hit her hideout. Fuckers. Look, I can get a crappy bottle of asari wine and maybe some form of bread if we're lucky."

"Not much of a brunch," she pouted, but stood up. Her intrepid hand found the few places his armor didn't cover and she made sure he felt her contact.

"Just sex then?" he asked, and she nodded, but he still bought the bottle of asari wine for her before they left the bar. It wasn't half bad.

#

They called her Mrs. Massani down at the civic building where she made her pottery. Hand built pottery she'd clarified for him, because she couldn't use the wheel properly even if there had been one. She'd still been on crutches the first time they went down there, but she was determined to do something, anything, besides sitting around.

He was out every day with Hackett's forces, trying to work on the impossible task of recovery and rebuilding. They were scavenging mostly now, no more people to be found and saved. Just resources they needed and bodies to be pulled out and identified. Even the bodies had started to slow down. People that were still missing after the final battle were the ones the Reapers had taken before.

His team was searching through the shell of an upscale apartment building when he found it. Half a burned cookbook with the front cover missing. Books were rare, and this was even rarer. Books weren't a priority, not to his team. He was sure some historian or librarian was cursing them for it, but he didn't get paid for books. It was worthless to just about everyone, but he had a feeling Mia would like it.

Zaeed picked it up and put it in his bag, and kept searching through the apartment, his eyes open for more books. He picked up the few things he could for Shepard, but mostly she was the one that brought things home. He only had tools or whatever rations there were for the week. Shepard was the trader, the one who created something out of lumps of clay and turned them into functional items. They had three plates, four bowls and six mugs and a set of salt and pepper shakers, though they hadn't had pepper in a while. It was more than most people had, though relief came through every week and gave them more items.

It wasn't as hard now as it had been during those first, disorganized, harried days. Shepard had been missing, then in the hospital for that, for those months when people were dying of starvation and exposure and every other little ill that war leaves in its wake.

He brought the remains of the cookbook, which was very nearly falling apart in his hands when he picked it up, but he kept it together. The dessert section in the back was still intact, as was the breads section before it. It had a fucking measuring chart in the back, and equivalent ingredients. He didn't know what the fuck cream of tartar was, but mix it was baking soda and it was baking powder. Not that he knew what the difference between baking powder and soda was, but he was sure that Mia would want to know.

Besides that, he brought her a container of dirt, well, soil, to be technical. He'd gotten it from the people that worked with the food distribution, explaining that Commander Shepard wanted to grow some food. He didn't say what, just let them think it was the regular things they'd gotten soil for before, the herbs that they used to cook or Shepard took to friends down at the building to make medicines out of, the few meager plants they'd been able to coax into growing from one of Mia's handmade clay pots.

He hadn't realized how nice it was to see a flower grow until the marigolds bloomed. She used calendula to make a salve that took the ache out of his bruises and helped close cuts.

"Got these for you," he said when Shepard limped in that night.

She looked tired, her bad eyelid drooping. The bag on her shoulder was full and he reached out to remove it for her.

"There's soap in there, like good stuff, not the military kind. Gus made it out of olive oil his son found in an abandoned house and oatmeal."

"Sounds delicious," he said. It did, but it also was probably heavenly compared to the standard issue stuff they had been using. "Gus is the one that made soap before?" he asked hopefully. Getting things through barter sometimes didn't mean that the person making it had any expertise in it, but if he recalled correctly Gus actually made soap before everything went to shit.

"Yeah. Today I finished another shaping some more plates today and a tiny spoon. I just wanted to try spoons," Mia told him. She was branching out in her pottery making, but Zaeed didn't mind. Wonky, wobbly clay pots and spoons were better than nothing, and nothing is what he had for the first few weeks. Ration bars were fine for just fingers, made to eat on the go, but they ran low quickly unless you had your own stock.

"You got me more soil!" she said, going through the things he'd brought back at the same time was emptying her bag. "Oh this is the good stuff!" she said, happily sticking her nose into the container to sniff at the rich, nearly black earth.

"I know how much you like strawberries. Wanted to make sure they grew." He was settling down onto the couch now, after he'd emptied her bag and put the contents away. There wasn't much, but she'd finished another curtain. He didn't know how she was getting the supplies, but her stitching was getting better. It made the prefab not quite so horrible. Trade ships were just starting to come to supplement their own meager goods, but even those were small shipments, mostly quarian and never full of household goods since they weren't adept at making them.

Zaeed looked over to see her setting the dirt next to the pot. She wouldn't plant them now, not at night when it would leave the seeds in the dark, wet and cold. Tomorrow morning he'd find her with dirty fingernails and a smile on her face.

"Do you need more?" he asked, nodding towards her container of soil.

"Not yet, but there's a few things that if I can get them to grow, they'd last a long time. Roses for one, but they need so much food I'm not sure I can start them successfully."

"Roses?"

"We can transplant them outside our house," Shepard said, settling against the crook of his arm. Zaeed held her close, kissing the top of her head.

"Sounds good," he said.

It would be months until their retirement house could even begin to be built, but in the meantime, they'd have strawberries.


End file.
